The crowd is on its feet at Carver-Hawkeye Arena. Thousands of fans are packed into a stadium that sold out with women’s basketball tickets for the second season in a row. The music blares as clips of Iowa’s Final Four runs are showcased to a sea of black and gold. The acoustics reach 106.5 decibels — nearly the sound of a jet engine.
Flames shoot into the air. Highlights fill the video screens. The fans roar their approval as a result. With the roaring success of the women’s basketball program over the last few years, Carver-Hawkeye Arena is a nightmare for visiting programs.
Sports, especially at the Big Ten level, have garnered a huge fan base at countless schools, and Iowa is no exception with 22 varsity teams to the university’s name.
When Iowa’s athletics programs square off in front of an energized crowd, these highlights — including a clip of Nile Kinnick’s famous Heisman Trophy speech before football games or Herky’s arrival at basketball games — add to the environment.
Iowa staff members work behind the scenes to make each team stand out in a blaze of glory, and the athletic department’s creative content unit is spearheading the effort.
The media personnel involved with these teams oversee the creation of much of the content that plays at Carver and Kinnick Stadium. Caleb Saunders, Iowa’s assistant athletic director for creative content, credits the success of both the teams and the media to the camaraderie between both parties.
“I think we have created a relationship with our teams,” Saunders said. “We really enjoy getting to work with our coaches and athletes. For us, having the access we need to tell these stories is the most important thing. We enjoy spending time with our teams and creating a relationship with them.”
Saunders oversees multiple units of content, including video, photo, graphic design, and live-event production.
“We’d like to think it’s a little motivating for the team, but we just want to be a window into what they’re doing,” Saunders said. “At the end of the day, we’re trying to create good atmospheres for our fans and bring people into these cool moments.”
Iowa women’s basketball is an example of a sport that has seen heightened interest and popularity at Iowa. With the star power that is former Hawkeye Caitlin Clark, the Hawkeyes reached the national title game in back-to-back showings in 2023 and 2024.
Now led by veteran program member and new head coach Jan Jensen, Iowa has seen success this season, too, against such teams as Iowa State, Penn State, Kansas, and Drake, playing several of their games in front of a packed Carver-Hawkeye Arena.
The creative content team first gathered buzz on social media with its pregame hype video for the women’s basketball squad last season. In it, a violinist played to a boisterous song at Hancher Auditorium is featured while the players flexed before the camera — highlighted by Clark emerging from the
darkness.
With pregame festivities designed to get a crowd on its feet, significant effort and hard work go into the media displayed at Carver.
“There’s a lot that goes into it,” Dalton Conrad, Iowa’s athletics video director, said. “A lot of time goes into picking the music and the overall vibe of what we’re going for for the specific project that we’re working on.”
With such a heavy media presence surrounding the court and filling press row at games, Conrad also noted how much time is spent sifting through material to find suitable candidates for publishing.
“A lot of hours go into sorting through all the footage that we shoot,” Conrad said. “At any given basketball game, we can have up to four or five shooters. So, you can imagine how much footage that is. Picking those big moments from each game takes a lot of time to go through, but it’s also fun to relive those moments while we’re editing the pieces.”
Carver-Hawkeye Arena sold out for the duration of the 2023-24 season with Clark’s sharpshooting abilities drawing fans in droves to see the Hawkeyes compete. When the Iowa Star entered the WNBA, some expressed skepticism over whether or not the fanbase would return.
Iowa fans’ fears were assuaged when the venue sold out yet again for the 2024-25 season, the news confirmed before the season had even officially begun. Jensen recalled this particular event fondly.
“That was a moment — a testament to all that was, really a testament to this fan base, of their belief in not only what was but what can be,” she said. “For the fans to be as excited as they were a year ago about such a young and rebuilding and youthful perspective, that is just really cool.”
For fourth-year point guard Lucy Olsen, the transfer from Villanova and smaller crowds at Finneran Pavilion to the fanfare associated with Iowa and Carver was a drastic shift.
“At Villanova, I think our stadium held 6,000,” Olsen said. “We may have sold it out once or twice.”
Carver-Hawkeye Arena holds just over 15,000 seats, most of them filled for women’s home games.
“I look around every day, and I’m like, ‘All those seats?’” Olsen said.
Jensen has expressed gratitude for the work the school’s media does to display the team and its successes, resulting in such energized environments come tip-off.
“They do a superb job showcasing our program with the work that they do,” Jensen said. “I really appreciate the efforts they make to elevate our brand on a daily basis.”
The strong partnership between the team and the media goes both ways, as Conrad expressed admiration for the people like Jensen who make these stunning media displays possible.
“I think we’re lucky in a way where we’ve had such legendary coaches that tell the story themselves,” Conrad said. “When Jan or Coach Bluder were speaking during their circle speeches that they do, they really paint the picture. We just throw the clips over their speeches that explain what they’re saying.”
With the season underway and the amount of fans regularly attending games at Carver numbering in the thousands, Conrad, Saunders, and others continue the work they’re doing, getting the crowd on its feet for Iowa’s legendary programs for seasons to come.
“My favorite thing is working with these great people,” Saunders said. “At the end of the day, you want to do what you love — you want to do it with people you like being around. For me, it’s making memories and being at these big moments with good people.”